My Kickstarter reward arrived. I've now claimed it on Steam._________________Mike Kasprzak
'eh whatever. I used to make AAA and Indie games | Ludum Dare | Blog | Tweetar

DiabloContributorJoined: 19 Nov 2015
Posts: 388
Location: :( :(

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2017 4:45 pm Post subject:

Got a little bit frustrated with a sneaking section last night. I'll guess it took about 10 tries. My favorite failed attempt was somewhere around 6 or 7, where I pressed the "throw object" button, but because I wasn't in the process of actually holding an object (long story, pause menu failed me), the button I pressed instead instructed Link to whistle very loudly, aka the "call the horse over to me" button. Might as well have gone in with a marching band that time.

In honor of this, I'm dedicating this post to GRIPES, however minor they may be.

-- only* one* save* slot*. So, I just researched this and there is definitely a workaround -- you create your own guest profile, or account, or something -- but there's no more "save slot 1, 2, 3" in this zelda game.

-- the game world is a little bit too big for my liking. sometimes the scale of the world is fine, and there's also some fast travel options, your horse, etc. that help out, but sometimes despite all of that you're just stuck trodding along a 5 mile trail through wherever, just for the hell of it. it's a bit of a downer, especially if you get to some remote area only to find out that there isn't really anything there (or at least, you don't see it)

-- obviously very subjective, but I don't think the music is very great. nothing is bad, well maybe I didn't like a couple of them... but there's only been a couple that I heard and thought, "oh, that's pleasing, I should come back to this area just to hear the cool music."

-- i don't have the patience for the crafting (cooking?) system. also becomes really tedious cooking one meal at a time, having to go into pause menu, pick all the ingredients, back out, say "cook," wait for food to cook, see the "new item made!" screen while you're mashing the "ok" button, and also the number of ingredients you pick up through the game gets a little overwhelming for me... it seems like there's 5 or 6 different things just for restoring stamina, for instance.

Youtube counter is now at 3, btw. Glad I cheated it too, no telling how many hours I would have wasted sitting there trying overly complicated solutions to a simple problem.

Played through the entire Thimbleweed Park on hard mode in a single ~13h session overnight. Some tough puzzles in there. Highly enjoyable stuff!_________________0xDB

DiabloContributorJoined: 19 Nov 2015
Posts: 388
Location: :( :(

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 5:00 pm Post subject:

I rage quit the 3rd dungeon boss last night. (3rd in the order I'm doing it, anyway.) Overall it was my least favorite dungeon, because it had a little too much focus on "hide and seek" with the items you needed to complete the puzzles. I did a little research on the boss fight -- mind you, I was able to get his health down quite a way, but then he got more evil and I couldn't stop him -- and went back in with a slightly modified loadout, and promptly defeated him on the first retry. (So the 11th try, or worse, not sure.) I was shocked to discover that a zelda game would give you the ability to urinate on a dead body, but I damn sure enjoyed every second of it.

Also, my character is a weapon hoarder, and I don't know what ot do. Every weapon has durability, and you can't repair them... so anytime I get a special weapon I decide "let's save this for [???]" and now all of my weapons are "good" weapons. I'm going to have to start using them, first of all I can obviously afford to given that I keep getting more, and secondly the worst case scenario is that I use them all up, and then I have to go back to using the generic weapons the bad guys drop. Well, that's what I've been doing all along, so what's the problem right?

SiroccoModeratorJoined: 19 Aug 2005
Posts: 9470
Location: Not Finland

Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2017 11:22 am Post subject:

0xDB wrote:

Played through the entire Thimbleweed Park on hard mode in a single ~13h session overnight. Some tough puzzles in there. Highly enjoyable stuff!

Damn. Kinda wished it would have taken longer.

I have it, but haven't started yet. Me and a few friends are on an epic Minecraft binge and don't want to stop until we kill the ender dragon._________________NoOP / Reyn Time -- The $ is screwing everyone these days. (0xDB)

I also wished Thimbleweed Park would have been longer but compared to Maniac Mansion, which can be finished in ~45m or Zak Mc Kracken ~3h, it is huge and I think it's also bigger than Monkey Island I or II, also I plowed through quite hard and did not exhaust all dialog everywhere nor did I try to do too many funny things, so I probably missed some stuff and jokes. Definitely want to play it again soon, also to try to solve problems with different characters._________________0xDB

Amazon is giving me a weird quote. Saying my copy is going to ship today, yet arrive Friday or next week. Crazy talk given the main Canadian Amazon warehouse is 2 hours from where I live, but who knows.

A friend of mine has had the Japanese version since it came out. I've been telling her to tease the fact that she's playing the game before everyone else whenever she can (I even said it to her again last night).

I guess that time has ended though. ;)_________________Mike Kasprzak
'eh whatever. I used to make AAA and Indie games | Ludum Dare | Blog | Tweetar

SiroccoModeratorJoined: 19 Aug 2005
Posts: 9470
Location: Not Finland

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 10:24 am Post subject:

PoV wrote:

Nice. A day early too.

Amazon is giving me a weird quote. Saying my copy is going to ship today, yet arrive Friday or next week. Crazy talk given the main Canadian Amazon warehouse is 2 hours from where I live, but who knows.

And best of all (perhaps)... there isn't any update to download :)_________________NoOP / Reyn Time -- The $ is screwing everyone these days. (0xDB)

DiabloContributorJoined: 19 Nov 2015
Posts: 388
Location: :( :(

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 4:12 pm Post subject:

Not seeing a day one patch? Better check your internet connection. Maybe your ps+ has expired, or something.

PoVModeratorJoined: 21 Aug 2005
Posts: 10971
Location: Canadia

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 4:46 pm Post subject:

There's day 1 DLC, but it's just the Japanese audio (i.e. it's optional).

That said, Persona 4 had probably the best English Dub in a very Japanese game I'd ever seen, plus 5 is scoring 10's across the board, so I'm fairly certain be fine without. ;)_________________Mike Kasprzak
'eh whatever. I used to make AAA and Indie games | Ludum Dare | Blog | Tweetar

DiabloContributorJoined: 19 Nov 2015
Posts: 388
Location: :( :(

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 6:39 am Post subject:

I have reached the end of my Zelda playthrough, I think. There are still a number of "shrine puzzles" I have not found (I'd say I got a little more than half of them), and obviously probably 22839 "hidden secrets" that I could find if I licked every blade of grass in the game 3 times while holding an amiibo, but I think I'm ok with that.

PoVModeratorJoined: 21 Aug 2005
Posts: 10971
Location: Canadia

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 1:11 pm Post subject:

As I thought.

Unfortunately I'm stupid busy with Ludum Dare for the next 2 weeks, and it's a fact I will have no personal restraint about playing it once the box opens. So I'm going to try to wait until Ludum Dare itself, and make it my reward._________________Mike Kasprzak
'eh whatever. I used to make AAA and Indie games | Ludum Dare | Blog | Tweetar

Yeah, P5 is pretty damn amazing. Super-duper polished, oozing with style to the point of giving Grasshopper Manufacture serious competition, and adding just enough new features to keep things fresh without going overboard. There's so much animation it's insane.

My basic complaints: camera rotation is too slow by default (can be changed in settings), and movement seems a little sticky. The cover system, which allows you to sneak up on enemies, seems less useful than it should. I frequently find myself sticking to the wrong side of sofas, etc.

Other tidbits:

Nothing spoilerish in here, but don't read if you want to discover some of the new game mechanics on your own:

- Dungeons are no longer randomly generated.

- Stealth is important. Getting detected by enemies too many times will kick you out of the dungeon. Ambushing enemies is easier, though.

- Musically it's more subdued, but still full of catchy and effective tunes. There are very few tracks with vocals now. I think this approach will appeal to more people, without pushing away people who were fans of the more bombastic tracks.

- Personas must be gained through negotiations with shadows now, which is cool. Or you can rob them at gunpoint for items. Yeah, guns are a thing now too, and some enemies are weak to bullets.

- Persona fusions seem exactly as they were before, but I haven't unlocked any advanced options yet.

- Your phone keeps a log of texts from your contacts, so keeping track of to-do's is easier.

- The online option lets you see what other players did each day (in general). There is no penalty for using it.

- There are multiple save points in each dungeon, and you can fast-travel between them.

- There are some returning enemies, but they have been redesigned and remodeled, as opposed to P3 and P4 where the enemies were largely identical across those two titles.

- Screenshots and videos are disabled throughout the whole game :( WTF Atlus.

_________________NoOP / Reyn Time -- The $ is screwing everyone these days. (0xDB)

Almost afraid to admit it among this crowd but I never really played Deus Ex... so I grabbed the GOTY edition from gog now + revision mod... only time will tell for how long it will sit on my pile of shame before I will get around to playing it._________________0xDB

DiabloContributorJoined: 19 Nov 2015
Posts: 388
Location: :( :(

Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2017 8:59 am Post subject:

It would be amazing if we learned that they'd programmed the game so it reacted to how long you waited before first playing it.

Denton! I've been waiting for nearly 20 years for you to show up! I had to send Gunther out on these missions while you were stuck in the ventilation ducts, and you can guess how well that went! He can't even operate a vending machine properly, let alone fight terrorists!

Meanwhile I am the proud new owner of Snake Pass. Hopefully I am never reincarnated as a snake, because it wouldn't take very long for me to fall out of the trees and die. Still, it's a very, very charming game.

Found it hard to have fun at first because it is really dated even with the mod, not just the visuals which are simple but still okay-ish, clunky controls, rotten UI but it has it's moments: like when I walked into the ladies restroom at Unatco HQ, prod-shocked the edgy low-poly administrator there after she made some snide remark about how she'd report this and whether I was expecting a show...like what if my Denton char identifies as lady-cyborg hm? yeah, she was being totally disrespectful... so I took the unconscious body into a briefing with Manderley... was told to not walk into the ladies restroom (still with that body on my shoulder) anymore so I dumped her in his private restroom as a token of apology and left so he could do whatever. Fun. JC "Psycho" Denton out.

On a more serious note, probably not going to finish this game(instead will just try to break it or do silly stuff like that) but I can see how it must have felt innovative when it was new._________________0xDB

SiroccoModeratorJoined: 19 Aug 2005
Posts: 9470
Location: Not Finland

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 5:32 am Post subject:

It's a difficult game to get into, and the initial accuracy makes gunplay intolerable for the first 6 hours or so. Your best bet is to run up to enemies and point your gun at their head, so you can't miss. Otherwise you're better off throwing your fucking gun at them. It's so bad until you get your accuracy up a bit :/

But the game has a good story for its time, and a scope that easily eclipses any other game of its type. You get about 2.5 to 3x the amount of game you'd normally see. And as you noted with the bathroom bit, there's a ton of detail in your interactions with the world.

.

In other news, Persona 5 is a little different now that I've played a bit more. No real spoilers, but again... avoid if you don't want the new mechanics revealed:

- Musically, things open up after your first dungeon (called a palace in the game). There are now vocals in some tracks, although they are still pretty subdued. I'm thinking as the story progresses the music becomes more engaging as opposed to the 'mood setting' tracks you start with. Pretty cool if so.

- There is a P3-style over-dungeon you can go to any time you want, that opens up more as the story progresses. This is separate from the palaces you find. There are bounties you can take on that will improve your party's standing with the city. So they have essentially combined P3 and P4's approaches to dungeons.

- The Sunday shopping show is still around, but the goofy song no longer plays when you watch it :(

- If you look around there's a fair bit of extra cash to be found in palaces.

- Getting a 1-more in battle allows you to give that turn to another player, provided your link with them is high enough. Any action they take will be more powerful. This is called a baton pass.

_________________NoOP / Reyn Time -- The $ is screwing everyone these days. (0xDB)

DiabloContributorJoined: 19 Nov 2015
Posts: 388
Location: :( :(

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 6:33 am Post subject:

If you're interested in more control over male/female, you might like the sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War, because it lets you decide which one to play as when you start the game. I don't remember for sure, but I'd expect there are minor conversation differences throughout the game, depending on which one you pick, in the sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War.

SiroccoModeratorJoined: 19 Aug 2005
Posts: 9470
Location: Not Finland

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:51 am Post subject:

Diablo wrote:

sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War

*cough*

Sequel, you say? Never happened._________________NoOP / Reyn Time -- The $ is screwing everyone these days. (0xDB)

Running up and going for their heads was indeed what I was doing after losing patience over stealth play (tried to just knock or dart everyone unconscious at first for two hours or so but that was highly unreliable with the low accuracy). About the gender identity thing... was just kidding, don't care about that. I think I will start a new game, wasn't very far in anyway (3rd Mission I think... investigating the subways), want to try stealth play again._________________0xDB

DiabloContributorJoined: 19 Nov 2015
Posts: 388
Location: :( :(

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 4:24 pm Post subject:

Usually what I've done is put all of my points into (sniper) rifle and usually hacking, or something electronics-ish. Things like swimming, oxygen, any of those I don't think I ever put a single point in, ever. But if you can get a steady aim on the sniper, it really helps.